Latest On The NHL’s Battle With Concussions & CTE

The NHL is in an ongoing legal battle with former players over their treatment of concussions and the lasting damage they can cause. Back in August we looked at the list of players who had been added to a lawsuit that includes names like Gary Leeman and Bernie Nicholls. In a new report from Rick Westhead of TSN, he explains the battle that the league has been fighting for the past two years with Boston University and their research staffs. Scientists like Dr. Robert Stern, a professor of neurology at the university wrote in an affidavit filed today that a subpoena that the league filed asking for all documents, correspondence and findings will essentially shut down any ongoing CTE research.

The subpoena’s astonishing scope and breadth of coverage will, if enforced, impose an incredible burden and disrupt the CTE Center’s operations. This request will harm ALL ongoing CTE-related research, both at BU and at institutions that collaborate with BU and/or rely on BU findings as part of follow-on work.

While Dr. Stern is concerned about the NHLs take on brain injury and the possibility of CTE affecting the lives of their retired players, his colleague Dr. Ann McKee, a leader in the field of CTE research who was the first to posthumously diagnose an NHLer with the disease took a more mathematical approach. She says that even the request to remove identification from the 172,000 photos that are in the school’s brain bank (and would fall under the subpoena) would take her staff years to complete. At a generously estimated 10 minutes per photo, one person would have to spend 13 years removing the information; “In practical terms it would shut down my research” McKee wrote in her affidavit.

None of us here at PHR would claim to have enough law expertise to comment on the tactics the NHL is using, but it does seem like the league refuses to admit that there may be a chance their athletes are in trouble after playing. The NFL has softened their stance and admitted that CTE is a possible result of playing football, but in hockey that is still off the table. The league’s official stance, put forward in March of 2016 by Dr. Rudy Castellani (the NHL’s medical expert) is that CTE is “more of a hypothetical construct or concept than an actual disease”.